


Count the Crosses As We Pass

by NothingEnough



Series: 47 crosses (left 4 dead 2) [2]
Category: Left 4 Dead 2
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Angst, Blow Jobs, Condoms, Dirty Talk, Ejaculate, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existentialism, First Time, Gender Dysphoria, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Scars, Smut, Trans Male Character, Vaginal, a lot of fucking swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 13:18:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5006254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingEnough/pseuds/NothingEnough
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's always time for one more bad decision. (Ellis/trans!Nick, set post-Dark Carnival.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Count the Crosses As We Pass

Give 'til it hurts and then keep on givin', that's Ellis's philosophy.

It comes of his childhood, he reckons, shit what shaped him whether he likes it or not. He grew up poor an' mostly alone. His sissy was fifteen when Ellis surprised his momma and daddy by being born. By the time he was old enough to notice her, Sissy spent most of her time getting her core classes at SSU. Then she was off to join the Dawgs. She visited maybe once a year and she had the kinda impact on his life expected of an auntie. An auntie who feels kinda embarrassed to visit this branch of the old family tree, but does it thanks to that good old Southern sense of family obligation.

His daddy wasn't interested in a baby, not when he just hit forty-one, and he got while the getting was good. Ellis don't remember him much, and honestly, it don't bother him. He heard once that his daddy remarried and was living with her folks in Puerto Rico, and he felt glad, knowing Daddy got to live the life he needed.

Mostly it was him and Momma, and he surely felt sorry for her being stuck with him. She never had time for no bullshit and she never deluded herself about her youngest. Sissy had the grades to get the HOPE scholarship and the intelligence to keep it while she worked on her degree. Momma knew there wasn't no point busting Ellis about his grades, they'd never be up to snuff. 

They was stuck on The Island, one of dozens dotting the Savannah coast. Georgia ain't got no shortage of islands. There was islands for rich folks where nobody was allowed in, ones like Hilton Head for tourists, ones for the critters and the rocks, ones for the Geechee, and ones for poor white trash. Guess which kind he lived on? 

There was maybe forty other kids on The Island, and not one of 'em wanted him for a friend. His people came from Virginia and an ex-mining town in North Georgia, so he may have been born in Savannah, but he still ain't a Savannite. Kids don't know that, occourse, but they sensed the judgment of their parents and reacted in kind. About the only way Ellis made friends, ever, was by giving. People liked him once he gave 'em shit. One boy became his friend for six months 'til he cleaned out Ellis's toy chest. 

He never had much else on offer for other people. He wasn't bright, the kindest thing to be said of his appearance for most of his life was "cute in a real goofy kinda way" (and usually it wasn't kind at all, more like "that boy's unfortunate"), and he had no money. So he gave what he did have. His time, his listening ears, whatever he had in his pockets or on the floor of his bedroom. He gave and then folks liked him. It worked okay for everybody.

Despite the changes his twennieth year brought him--Keith and him started up Bullshifters, and he finally hit a growth spurt that balanced out his face and upgraded him to "my word, but he's attractive"--he never changed. He gave folks walking on the side of the road a lift, he gave folks discounts if they sounded like they was in need. The next year, Momma gifted him three thousand dollars, money she socked away over the course of his whole life, and told him to invest it in the business. Told him she was real proud of him. He'd cried and tried to make her take it back. He could not abide the thought of his Momma giving so much to him. He's a giver, not a asker.

Now he's twenny-three and Momma died six days before he met his new friends. His old friends escaped on the whirlybirds or else got ate alive by the horde, and even if he gave up that habit of giving before, he'd fall right back on it now. 

He can sense they don't like him much. He's dumb and they don't even bother to hide the eye-rolling and the frustrated sighs when he talks. He ain't got much to give at present, but he makes do. He gives 'em stories 'cause they're free, he gives 'em backup, and one by one, he gives 'em time. 

The best time is the only kinda time they got, late at night in the safe room. The third night they all spent together, Ellis woke with the sense that somebody was watching him. He rolled over and seen it was Ro, just sitting there all bundled in her sleeping bag. Looked like she wanted to cry but didn't dare. He moved next to her and asked if she needed to jaw. She musta talked at him for near on thirdy minutes about how she come to be in Savannah and who she lost along the way. She cried a bit at the end, and he listened, offered her some water and the right questions, told her a little too much about himself once she was done. 

And then, two nights ago it'd been Coach who wanted a talk. He and Ellis shared memories of Savannah. Coach had some Geechee family, he talked about his gramma dancing in ring shouts, and Ellis talked about Keith taking him to one where Keith's daddy led the shout. Coach didn't cry but his voice got real thick. He didn't say what become of his folks.

And after, not all the time, Ellis thought they liked him a little better. Leastways they got nicer when they told him to shut up.

Then there's Nick. And he don't know what he's gotta give Nick for Nick to like him. Might be there's nothing he'll take.

He rises from the couch he's supposed to be sleeping on and heads for the kitchen. A beer might help him go down. He cracks open a can of Iron Mountain. He always thought Iron Mountain tasted like a dirty diaper smelled, but the man of this house had bought it and so he drank it. Back on the couch. Take a swig. Wince. 

You'd think Nick would have to like him eventually, just on account of the circumstances. And at the moment, those circumstances are pretty sweet. The pilot what flew 'em outta the Oaks said after an hour that their bird only had the fuel to get 'em another sixty miles. They agreed to hunt up the nearest airport and send up flares so's he could find it. Coach made them stop after six hours, and after some hit and miss, they found this place. The old residents had knocked out all the stairways, replaced 'em with a couple rope ladders, and turned the upper floors into one giant safe room. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an honest-to-God in-law suite. Running water (thank Christ for wells) and a working genny. Ain't been that long since the world ended and Ellis is still bowled over by all this luxury. 

A bigger swallow of piss-flavored beer. 

They'd cleared the upper floors out of instinct once they all climbed up, and Ellis walked into the in-law suite, where he's sleeping now. Nothing in the kitchen or the mini-sitting room. He opened up the bedroom door and the smell hit and he knew what become of the people who took so much damn care to protect themselves from the horde.

He waited 'til everybody else sounded like they was asleep, then he opened up the bedroom window and unloaded. The momma. The gramma and papa. A teenage boy. And a daddy with powder-burns on his hands and a red marker in his lap, the marker he had used to write WE GOT THE GODDAM FLU on the wall above the bed before he headshotted his kin and then himself.

Ellis threw them all out one by one, then he shut the window and prayed for each of them. Then he left the bedroom and shut the door and used a screwdriver to bust the handle.

But Nick don't know about any of that. Nobody knows but Ellis. All Nick knows is they got a pretty damn fine spot to rest in 'til morning. 

And even then, with everything kinda going their way, Nick cannot fucking stand him. He don't wanna talk to Ellis, or hear his voice, or even be all that near him. Coach busted out a fine supper outta whatever was still good in the freezer. Ellis had took his plate and plunked down next to Nick, and Nick got right up and walked outta the damn room. Ellis thought he hadn't showed how that made him feel 'til Rochelle glared at Nick's back and called him an ugly bitch before the guest bedroom door shut.

Jesus. If he can't make this thing work, what's he gonna do?

He tries to climb the Iron Mountain and flounders in a avalanche of foam and bitterness, and he gives up. He sets the beer on the floor and fixes to lie down when he hears something outside the little suite.

His brain says Infected but his mind says hold up, give it a listen. He closes his eyes. A scrape. A thump. A filthy curse growled in a familiar tone. Speak of the Devil. If Nick's still up, might be he's too tired to hate Ellis at present.

Up he gets and he sneaks out the door to the main hall. To his left is the master bedroom, where Ro's at. Across the way is the kid's bedroom and the regular sound of Coach's breathing. The hall cuts caddycorner to his right and ends in a teevee room. Nick opted for the couch in there.

He enters the room and it's all shadows. Too late for the moon and too soon for the sun, and they don't dare to turn on any lights. Nick is a thin shadow closer and more distinct than the rest, he's holding his left foot in his hands and wobbling on his right. He grumbles. Lets his foot go. Straightens up.

He finally notices Ellis and freezes, and Ellis don't know why at first. Then his eyes catch up to the deeper darkness out here and he sees it.

Nick is shirtless.

Normally that woulda made Ellis blush, seeing as he ain't failed to notice that his friend is the kinda handsome he always wanted to be. But Ellis ain't in a blushy humor, 'cause Nick don't look too happy about being spotted. Nick's chest looks like somebody ran him over with a SUV. He's got all these deep pits in his skin that look like black holes in the darkness. Nick backs away from him like Ellis is threatening him with a machete and he falls back onto the couch, and shit. He's been staring.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry," Ellis says, hands flapping up into something like a surrender. "I wasn't, I mean, I heard something and I was just--"

"Shut up."

"Okay." He stands there for some long awkward eternity looking at his feet. "Can I go now?"

"They got beer in that kitchen?"

"If you could call it that."

"Bring me one. You owe me for scaring the piss outta me."

Ellis almost runs back to the kitchen. May not be much, but Nick finally asked him for something that wasn't a medkit. 

By the time he returns with the beer, Nick got into a A-shirt. He sits by Nick and passes him the can. This time, Nick doesn't get up and leave.

"You okay?" Ellis says.

He watches Nick try the Iron Mountain, cough, then look at the giant can like it offends him. "I guess. I've had worse."

"That really why you ain't sleeping? No booze in your system?"

"No. I'm not sleeping because the entirety of Dixie is like the goddamn devil's armpit. Fucking humidity."

"Is it humid?"

"You are such a cock-smith."

"Man, you gotta quit making up swear words. Leave the damn hyphens alone, they ain't bothering you none."

He hopes for a laugh and gets a smile like a whisper, barely here and gone right away. "You shoulda grabbed a beer, too. I hate to suffer alone."

"I'd rather drink dogpiss."

"Look, you gonna ask or not?"

"Do what?"

"Christ almighty. You're pretty fucking stupid, but I cannot believe you're that stupid, our you'd have won a Darwin Award long before now. You know what I mean."

Ellis almost panics 'cause, before God and his Momma, he has no idea what in the hell Nick is talking about. Then his brain provides him with the memory of all them holes in Nick's chest and oh. Ain't like he forgot, exactly, he's just used to fucked-up scars, and he's used to Nick's business being none of his never-mind. He stares at his own nervous hands, dry-washing each other over the tops of his thighs. "Wasn't gonna. Figured you'd prefer not to say."

He hears the gurgle-swallow of Nick taking his life into his hands with that Iron Mountain. Cough. Hiss-creak of his weight adjusting on the couch. "... Everybody else already knows. And I really, I dunno how to... fuck it. It's surgery. I got a surgeon to cut out my tits and I got staph and I got all these giant boils and I almost died. And what you saw is what's left of my chest. Pretty fucking sexy, right?"

Ellis barely hears the last sentence. How the fuck did Nick get tits what hadda be cut out? He don't got any stretch marks, so prob'ly not on account of weight. Prob'ly not cancer, and cancer ain't gonna give him tits. Maybe he said 'tits' when he meant 'pecs' 'cause he likes the sound of the word. He sure as hell uses it a lot. Or maybe he oughta stop playing guessing games and admit his ignorance. "... why'd you haveta get that done?"

A disgusted sigh. "Because, you lumbering jackass, you've gotta jump through a few surgical hoops if you want to change the F under 'Sex' on your birth certificate to an M." Another glug of beer. "Jesus, this shit sucks."

"... oh. Uh."

"Yep. I bet you feel like a shithead." 

"A li'l bit. I mean..." He reaches for the brim of the hat he ain't wearing, rubs the back of his neck instead. "I guess, uh, sorry for being a shithead. And I'm real sorry about that time I said you had a tiny dick."

"Eh. It was worth it just to see you get really pissed off."

He risks a look in Nick's direction. He's staring at Ellis in a kinda unnerving fashion; those real deep-set eyes are just as intense in the dark as in full daylight. Ellis wonders what the hell he's thinking. Looks back at his hands. "Listen, I, I know I can talk the bark off a tree, but I'm fair at listening, and you look like you want somebody to listen. I wouldn't know what to say about that shit anyhow, so I ain't about to interrupt. How 'bout you get whatever's eating you off your chest?" Wait. "Bad choice of words. Sorry."

"You gotta stop saying sorry, man, or I'm gonna get my balls up and knock a lesson into you."

They sit in the low dark, and he usually gets nervy when nobody talks, but this is okay. Reminds him of the many times he and Keith and them spent summer nights on somebody's porch or the beach, drinking and playing guitar and bullshitting about their shared glorious future, and occasionally the bullshit faded to a good silence, one fulla night sounds and the pop of a bug killing itself in the porch light and no words. He leans back on the couch and lets Nick gather his wool.

"I used to watch a lot of shitty movies," Nick says at last. "Lot of end-of-the-world shit, right? And you learn from that, even if you don't think you are. Like that guy in that, whatsit, with the rant about who survives in a horror movie."

"' Scream'," Ellis says. He kinda likes how Nick's accent sometimes thickens on some words, like _doan_ and _horrah_.

"Sure. So I saw some zombie movies in my day. And I learned some shit. Mostly that people like me never live long enough to appear in those movies. So there's a lotta shit I didn't even think about 'til this happened. Like how the fuck am I supposed to get my hormones when pretty much every goddamn doc in the country's dead."

"... Shit. That blows."

"Like a hurricane." Another drink, Nick burps loudly, the can thunks onto the floor. "I... No, I'm not going into it."

"Come on, now you've gotta."

"It's gross, Ellis."

"What, you ain't getting a period, are you?" Between Sissy and Momma, Ellis learned long ago that his friends who pretended to throw up when women talked about periods were fools.

"... Not yet. It's coming soon. God, I shoulda taken the shit with me when I left home, but hell. How was I supposed to know the goddamn Infection was coming?"

Okay, not the Red Sea. That left the one other part of the cycle he knew of. "Are you... What's it called..."

"Ovulating. Yeah. I haven't had a cycle in nine years and it fucking sucks and I'm tired of pretending it doesn't."

"Huh." Dammit, he don't recollect what that means for Nick, and he's too nervous to ask. Ellis reaches for his hat again--remembers it's back in the in-law suite--runs his hand through his hair.

"They don't teach sex ed in the South, do they."

"What?"

"You look like an artist's rendition of don't-have-a-clue."

Heat rises up over his face and focuses on his ears. "Guess I don't."

"I dropped an egg. Or I'm about to. I've got zits all over my back and my boxers are wet as a water-park 'cause everything from my uterus on down wants to fuck. And it's so fucked up, you know, we were running through all those damn plains earlier tonight and I'm all hopped up on adrenaline and watching for Infected and the entire time, there's this tiny part of my brain that's wondering when we can get to a safe room so's I can rub one out. But that doesn't even work. Like my pussy knows I didn't pump it full of semen and it's gonna make me even hornier 'til I give it what it wants. There. I told you it was gross."

Ellis has a mouth so big his whole damn life falls out of it sometimes. Ain't a problem at the moment. He idly picks up the beer can and works the tab 'til it snaps off. He don't like how Nick talks about his body. He sounds like he's discussing a pile of shit the dog left on the good rug, not the total package of compact sexy Ellis sees when he looks at Nick. Saying that won't help. This shit is too deep for one compliment to fix. 

He realizes for the first time how much of that mean Nick gives other people is designed. Keep 'em far enough away and they won't notice what he don't want folks noticing.

"I don't think it's gross," he says.

"Fuck you. You eat grits. You wouldn't know gross if it shit in your mouth. It's fucking... I'm not a goddamn chicken, why do I gotta lay fucking eggs?"

He shrugs. "It sucks. There anything we could do? Maybe we could find some of them hormones next time we see a doctor's office."

"That's not helping me tonight."

Ellis squeezes the tab so tight in his fist it feels like it cuts. "If I fucked you, would that help?"

The silence that answers this question goes on so long, Ellis looks over to make sure Nick ain't asleep. He ain't. He's hunched over, arms wrapped around his chest, all eyes on Ellis. His mouth hangs open. Ellis's ears feel like they caught fire.

"You. You are." Nick opens his mouth, closes it. "You are a shit-eating lunatic. Who says that? Holy shit, I can't--"

"I'm sorry." He tried to be quiet all this time, but his willpower shakes and a flood of words come out his mouth. "It-it, you said you was horny, and it sounded like a two-man job to me, and I mighta made a pass before now except it's the apocalypse and you know I thought you hated me, Lord knows you said so enough times, and prob'ly you do now if you didn't already, but that ain't the point, the point is if you wanna, maybe--"

"Sure."

"... Really?"

"Fuck it. Why not. There's always time for one more bad decision. You got a condom?"

"Shit. No, but there's gotta be one around here someplace."

"Find it. I'll be in the guest bedroom."

He hears Nick get up. Watches him walk to the rear of the sitting-room and let himself into the guest bedroom. He gets why Nick didn't wanna sleep in there. It's tiny and he can't see any windows from here.

Ellis gets up from the couch so fast, he kicks the beer can over. He lets Iron Mountain soak into the carpet, drops the tab next to the spreading puddle. He sneaks into the master bedroom, certain the sound of his heart thumping in his throat will wake up Rochelle. He checks the bathroom and finds an open box of life-jackets hidden in the washcloth drawer on the man's side of the sink. He shoves the whole box in his jeans pocket under the coveralls. 

As he moves out of the bath, he hears Rochelle roll over, hears the click of a pistol.

"It's me," he says.

"Thufuk yoo doon?"

"Hadda take a piss."

"Whur th biscits?"

"Go back to sleep, Ro."

"Mmmguf." The pistol clanks on the end table.

By the time he stands in front of the guest bedroom door, his hands tremble at his sides. This is all reminiscent of most times Ellis ever got laid. The first time he and Keith fucked instead of fucked around, an afternoon of Goldeneye and making out derailed when Ellis got so wound up he creamed his pants. Keith, black eyes wide and bright with laughter, asked if he really came just 'cause of kissing, Ellis said yes, Keith asked if he could do it again, Ellis reckoned he could, and they spent the next couple hours in Keith's bed, hands all over each other and making a glorious wreck of the sheets 'til Keith's Daddy come home with supper. At some point, some of his friendships turned into something else and one said "You wanna?" and the other said "Hell yeah I do" and the fun started. He could hardly believe he got a "Hell yeah" from Nick. Left him more nervous than excited, now that he thinks about it, but his cock still throbs against three layers of cloth thinking about it.

He lets himself in. The room is landlocked, no windows at all, and the dark here is indescribable. All he can see is the ghostly white square of a pitcher-frame on the wall to his left and the pale wood of the footboard hovering about two feet before him. His hands drift in front of his body as he takes two sightless steps forward. His foot impacts something hard and leathery and he eats shit, his knees slam into the carpet and his forehead bangs the footboard. A rainbow bursts through his vision.

" _Fuck!_ "

From somewhere on the bed: "... are you dead?"

"Naw I'm good I'm good." He rocks back on his knees, hands clapped to his forehead, breath hisses between clenched teeth, his half-arousal shriveling up into a tiny ball from the pain. 

"Hurry up. I don't have all night."

The words sound hostile, but it's how Nick says 'em that lets Ellis throw off the agony of his forehead, stumble to his feet, shuck his coveralls in one firm push, hold the box of condoms in his teeth while he undoes his jeans, nearly swallow the box by accident when he squirms outta his shirt. Nick sounds like he can smell supper's just about done and he can't wait to get his plate and go to fucking town. Off goes the underwear and Ellis crawls up on the bed and the coverlet's all slick under his knees and palms. His knee comes down hard on something bony under the covers and he hears Nick loudly propose an act of bestiality with a duck.

"Jesus, I'm sorry," Ellis says around the box still in his teeth, slip-slides off Nick's foot. He's always been a blusher and for the third damn time in twenny minutes, he feels a glowing heat creep up his neck and his ears, this one outta crumpling embarrassment. He shifts closer to the headboard and waits for Nick to tell him to fuck off.

"'s fine. Darker than a box of assholes in here." He senses the closeness of that voice and the depression of a body on the mattress. A hand (kinda cool skin, all rough from gunpowder and Lord knows how many baths in acid and goo) brushes the edge of his shoulder. Seizes on him like he's a pistol-grip, curls around the base of his skull, jerks him flat on his side, surprises the box outta his mouth. He hears the rattle of foil and cardboard hitting something soft and he reckons he just pegged Nick in the face with a buncha goddamn rubbers and now comes the fuck-off-already, but Nick kinda chuckles instead. The crinkle of a packet sliding outta the box and disappearing into a hand. Then thin lips meet the side of his neck and Ellis forgets why Nick oughta be mad at him.

Nick ain't much for physical affection. He gives Ellis more teeth than lip on his neck, and every move he makes aims directly for getting a cock in his pussy as soon as humanly possible. His hands run quick over Ellis's shuddering body, down his neck then his sides then his hips then sliding front and center wrapping tight around his cock. He gets so goddamn hard that the pain in his forehead dies, no blood feeding his nerves. Nick makes this _sound_ that's all approval and lust and he gives Ellis a few taunting strokes, Ellis bites his own lip and tries getting Nick under his own hands but then Nick slings a leg over his hip, pinning his arm to his side.

"Hey," he says, and don't recognize his own voice. He sounds like he's strangling.

"What," Nick says. Jesus fuck he's good at this, Nick's fingers weave together around his dick and his grip slides up then down then up his thumbs tickle over the crest and oh that motherfucker he's doing this on purpose.

"We, we gotta t-talk--"

"The hell you say."

"Look, just--just--let go!"

Nick quits moving entirely. Ellis can't so much as feel him breathe against his neck. That amazing grip round his arousal vanishes. So does the leg pinning him in place. He hears the creak of the boxspring and the hiss of the sheets, and he pitchers the actions to match the noises, and he gets Nick turning away and sitting on the edge of the bed. The thud of feet on the carpet confirms it. He sits up and guesses where Nick's back oughta be and guesses right, he feels irritated cool skin under his hand and strokes up his spine and Nick jerks outta his reach.

"Hold up, now. I, uh, I'm not--"

"Not what." Nick asks questions and makes statements with the same damn bored tone, like he always knows the answer before it's given.

"Look, uh, I need to say a couple things."

"Oh, Jesus Christ in a wagon. Okay. Fine. Whatever."

"I-I." He sits cross-legged and his hands sit on his sore knees. His eyes are adjusting a li'l and he can just see Nick's vague shape, a shadowy ghost on the edge of the bed, ready to run. He talks fast. "I just wanted to say that you might be doin' this on account of you need to, but, uh, I'm doing it 'cause I wanna, and I don't wanna just lie back and let you happen to me. I mean, I wanna touch you and it feels like you ain't letting me, and if you truly hate the idea of me touching you, that's okay, but you gotta tell me that's what it is. I thought you was hot since the hotel and I knew I thought you was hot when you patched me up in that first safe room, and ain't nothing you could say that can change that, and ain't no scars or whatever could change it either. Hell, I like scars, that just means you seen some shit. That ain't the point, the point is, I ain't scared of whatever you got under your clothes and I ain't grossed out by you, and you don't gotta treat me like some shrinking violet and protect me from you. If you don't wanna be touched, if that's gonna piss you off, or fuck with your head, or you just don't like it, that's fine. But if you think I don't wanna touch you, you're dead wrong."

A short silence, this one less awkward than the last. He sorta sees Nick turn and look at him over his shoulder. "You talk too much."

"Well shit, man, how else we gonna know what's okay and what ain't if we don't talk?"

Another silence, and it hits Ellis that this might be the first time in Nick's whole sexual life that somebody asked him what he wanted. A deep, startled sadness sinks through his mind. How the fuck do you fuck and not lay out a couple ground rules first? 

He waits, his John Thomas still at attention, kinda pulsing comfortable along the light pressure of the topsheet. He hears a shift of weight on boxspring, then: "... I dunno, man. I'm not easy on the fingers."

"Bullshit." He sits up, scooches behind Nick 'til his chin rests on Nick's shoulder and his cock heats along the small of Nick's hips, his inner thighs hug the outside of Nick's legs, and Nick, in an apparent act of reckless bravery, lets him. Ellis eases a hand under the hem of the A-shirt and finds a nice surprise--he's got some muscle on him but his stomach feels soft and giving to the touch, a good roundness of fat. He feels Nick kinda flinch and then relax as Ellis strokes over him and groans low against his ear. His fingers crawl up the length of Nick's body, following the thick coarse hairline and dragging the A-shirt up along his waist, 'til he finds an expanse of skin totally innocent of body hair. 

He feels utterly unlike anybody Ellis touched before. First the thin, almost not-there line of scar tissue under his pec; he figures this is where the surgeon first went in to shape Nick like he oughta be. Then a twisting landscape of hard and smooth and rough, his fingertips dip into one of those bowls in Nick's flesh and the skin feels shiny and glassy, he moves on and there's this real heavy swell of scar-tissue around a nub and he guesses that's what's left of Nick's right nipple. He touches it real light and Nick ain't breathing and he understands that Nick didn't feel a thing. He tries again a little harder and he practically hears Nick roll his eyes. He sighs and grumbles "harder", and Ellis imagines Nick crying out that exact word while getting pounded into the mattress and Ellis's cock yearns up against him. He pinches Nick's nipple between thumb and finger and gives it a wrench so hard it can't possibly feel like anything but pain, and Nick chokes on nothing and rises up off the bed for half a second and Christ Jesus he just made one of the hardest men he ever met _shiver_.

Right, about that hard, then. He squeezes and twists, and Nick breathes harder and then moans and Ellis moans along with him. He shifts to the other side and this one feels a little more intact than the other, he pinches and earns a quiet hissing "fuck" outta Nick, and Ellis feels his hips moving out of a selfish need for friction, and Nick don't seem to mind much. He kisses the back of Nick's ear as his free hand occupies itself, dives right between Nick's parted legs and feels the wet heat soaking through the front of his boxer-briefs, and true, this ain't what he thought he'd find if he ever got into Nick's pants, but he'll take it, take it gladly.

He fondles his way through the slit at the front of the boxer-briefs, and oh god he's so hard to the touch, hard and slick from precum, Ellis lets his fingers get acquainted with the size and shape of him. Nick's cock ain't all that different from any other cock Ellis has handled. He's gotta lotta foreskin but that ain't strange, he's maybe a little shorter than a finger and kinda thick. Ellis eases the foreskin back and finds the head and it's got this perfect smooth aching shape to it. He smiles. Holds Nick between thumb and forefinger and squeezes his stroke down to the base.

"Oh fucking Christ," Nick manages, and the smile turns into a grin.

They sit like that for some long sweet minutes, him jerking Nick's hardness and grinding against him and listening to him swear and stammer and punctuating Nick's broken sentences with his own soft moans. Nick don't say too much what makes sense, but every word smokes and he feels so goddamn good, he leans back on Ellis and lets him kiss over the rough skin of his neck.

Down hard round the base and then up along the hot shaft and then swirl round the tip and then back down partway. He tweaks Nick right below the head, kinda rolls his thumb and fingertip round it, and he senses the crown pop up through his grip. Nick's hips give a helpless jerk and he makes this shocked noise back in his throat, Ellis smiles and sucks at the razorburnt skin right where his throat meets his jaw and he does it again. Another short thrust of Nick's hips and he reckons that must be good. He keeps on, lets Nick fuck his hand, he's all kisses and licks and mighty damn proud of himself, 'til he absorbs that Nick ain't moaning nonsense, he's saying _stop_.

His hands vanish from under Nick's clothes. He slides back a bit, afraid his embarrassment will scorch Nick somehow. Just when he thought he was doing okay. He hears Nick catch his breath, senses him lean forward, hands prob'ly on his knees.

"What..." Nick starts, gets another breath. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"That bad?"

"No, idiot, it's that good. What the hell was that?"

"I dunno. I's just touching you like how I'd touch me."

Nick don't say nothing, and it takes Ellis a second to catch on. He must be used to people who see his junk and treat it like how they see women in porn being treated. Grind one or two fingers along the clit's tip, ignore the rest, ignore how bored or uncomfortable she gets after ten seconds of the same old shit. Ain't right to treat a lady that way, plus, Nick ain't a lady. Must be one of a thousand tiny ways people remind him they think he ain't a real man. Shit, Ellis would be walking around with a throbbing hate-on if he had to deal with that every time he wanted to get some.

"Want me to keep going?"

"Fucking yes."

Good. The humiliation burns down to coals and Ellis moves back against him, resituates his hands, his right moves under the tight band topping Nick's underwear and his left tugs up the A-shirt so the hem sits right under his collarbone, and it's back to the pleasant work. Pinch and slip and caress and stroke and listen to him cry out for more and harder and oh. Ellis keeps on 'til his wrist hurts and suddenly the whole of Nick's sex clenches up and an amazing hot gush of precum wets his fingers.

"Shit!" Nick snaps, all angry, as though he knows he just fucked everything up. Why?

"That's fucken hot," says Ellis, his mind is all fuzzy with want and his accent joins it. "So if I sucked your cock, d'ya think I could getcha to come in my mouth like that?"

"Afukyeh," is the only reply he gets, and he parses it into a yes.

Ellis scoots back and slides off the bed, keeps one hand on Nick's thigh so he don't lose track of him. He can sorta see now, not really, mostly just Nick's shape, no features of his face. Shame. He might like to see what face Nick pulls as he grabs the hem of his drawers and yanks forward, he feels Nick pick up his hips so his underwear comes off easier. He kneels down in front of him and by the time his boxer-briefs rest on top of his feet, Ellis has both hands pushing his legs apart and he goes in for a taste.

Nick calls out to Jesus like this is some hellaciously fun church service. Giving his mouth is one of Ellis's favorite things to offer. Fuck, he tastes so all his own, just like Nick oughta be, his cock tastes like heat and sex and Ellis's fingers; his tongue risks lower, moves between his lips flicks along the opening and here he's dark and kinda tangy and rich. Back up to his dick and Ellis kisses the head then pushes down to the base, he looks up just as Nick falls bodily back onto the mattress.

Hands fly into his hair, fingers sink through his curls and cup the top of his skull and hold him fast. He don't mind. He sucks harder and his tongue rocks round the shaft, left then right and under then over, and he groans as he feels Nick thicken from all the suction, the head so firm and distracting he can't help but coil his tongue round it. Precum coats his chin and those full lips and he cannot ignore them any longer. As his mouth loves Nick's hardness, he draws a finger along the flush skin and rough hair, presses between the cleft, finds the cumslick fullness of his inner lips, pushes into him. 

Ellis makes it to the second knuckle when a flip of his tongue gets an extremely loud curse outta Nick--if there was windows in here, they'd be shaking--then Nick clamps round his finger and throbs in his mouth and Ellis is coated in wet up to his wrist.

He pulls back and lets Nick catch his breath. He shifts on his knees and idly licks his hand clean. He hopes Nick knows where the condoms are at. Right know, Ellis don't know much of anything.

"That," he says as he gets to his unsteady feet, "that was fucking boss."

"Truest goddamned thing you ever said," Nick says. Sounds like he just run a marathon. 

He flops back onto the bed beside Nick. His own cock sheds a small tear of precum over all the attention it ain't getting, but fuck it. That was fun, it gave him something good to pitch his mind against for a change. Worth it whether Nick wants another go, out Nick falls asleep and Ellis takes care of himself. 

He squints at the other shadow in the bed aside him. He just makes out Nick's profile, the distinct shape of his nose and the slope of his forehead. "Did it work?"

"Nope."

"You're shitting me, Nick, I give great head."

"Oh, it was okay," Nick says. Ellis is a generally gentle and patient soul, but every now and again, he thinks real hard about punching Nick on the shoulder. "I came. That was... you did say you'd fuck me. And I don't have to grab your dick to know you still want to."

"Jesus, you are the worst. Maybe I don't wanna fuck you anymore, d'j'ever think about that? 'It was okay'? Good Lord."

"Then get the fuck outta here." He sounds as bored as ever, if a touch breathless.

Ellis opens his trap to say he'll do just that, thank you, if Nick is gonna be rude about it, but that long-standing need to give tells him to shut up and give Nick some thought. He ain't like anybody else Ellis tried to lay, that becomes clearer by the second. Ellis ain't expecting prayers and offerings or nothing, just the groaning kinda "Jesus baby that was so good" compliments he usually got when he used his tongue on a lover. Maybe that was his fault. He pitchers Nick fucking someone before the end of days, them acting like his scars glow with radioactivity and his squirting like it's poison, handling what parts of him they would touch like he's repulsive but exotic; and Nick ain't stupid, he knows what they're doing and besides, they're just telling him what he already feels is true. He don't ask 'em for anything so he won't be let down when he don't get it. He acted like coming ain't a big deal on account of he normally don't come, getting pleasure for himself was maybe more an accident than the plan. 

It's aggravating and also kinda sad. 

"I'm sorry," Ellis says, turning onto his side, pressing a bit against Nick. He feels like a buncha steel cable pulled tight enough to snap. "If you ain't done, you ain't done. You want me to go, I'll go, you want me to stay, I'mma fuck you 'til you can't stand it no more. D'you want me to go?"

He waits, his cock all aching and hoping Nick tells him to stay, his body so close Ellis can feel the heat of his skin and the slight sink of his weight into the bed. He waits and Nick says nothing. He waits and he hears the soft scrabble of a hand feeling around on the coverlet. Then something the size of a silver dollar wrapped in foil drops onto his face.

Ellis grins, grabs the condom, sits up on the edge of the bed. He cautiously opens the packet to the sounds of the boxspring creaking and Nick rearranging himself on the bed. He's used enough condoms so's he can put one on in the dark. He works it down his grateful cock and thinks of how he really oughta have cut one of these in half and used it when he gave Nick head. Well. If Nick has anything he can catch, it's a bit late to worry about it. If Ellis gets to suck his dick in the future, he'll ask if he needs the extra protection or not. He'll tell Ellis the truth, the truth is all they got.

He automatically checks the tip, good, okay, and the nervous excitement hits him full on, his sex shivers into his hand and hot prickles rush up his back and down his shaft. He just sees Nick laid out nearby and scrambles for him, those legs part and he moves in between, his hands trailing over all that wiry tension. In the interim, Nick kicked off his drawers and accidentally pinned a pillow under his hips. Ellis tries to tug the pillow out from under and he hears a "Cut that shit out. My back's fucked up as it is, I don't need to throw it out when there's no goddamned chiropractors left."

"Sorry."

"You say sorry one more time and I'm gonna--"

Ellis will never know what Nick was gonna say. His hands find the back of Nick's hips; the latex-and-lube-coated head of his cock finds the fullness of Nick's lips. Slide down and Nick swells up round the tip and he kinda senses the stiff ache of the smaller lips kissing his dick and there and _there_.

He's so wet that Ellis glides into him in one go, he ain't trying but it happens anyhow, all of a sudden the curve of muscle and pudge above Ellis's sex meets the tip of Nick's cock and those inner lips are so tight round the base and it's Ellis's turn to call out to the Savior. He moves outta instinct and Nick's nothing but slick tight giving and he grinds back in and he's gonna fall in love with the sensation of Nick's hardness dragging across the topside of his cock with every thrust. He loses his balance and lands square on top of him and he stops worrying if he's doing good. Nick catches one hand in his hair and the other grabs his ass so hard it hurts, thin lips on his ear and the ragged way he breathes tells Ellis he's doing just fine. He rocks hard and again and Nick sucks the edge of his ear between his teeth and bites, his legs kinda brace on the slippery coverlet and gives Ellis some resistance, something to draw out of and fuck into and goddamn Ellis is fairly sure he can't get into heaven no more.

He ain't gotta think of nothing but watching Nick's reactions; he ain't gonna be one more thoughtless asshole, he ain't, his new mission in life is to make him come right and go outta his mind from good the whole way, and Ellis may be stupid, but he's a stubborn bastard and a problem-solver. He tilts his hips so his cock thrusts in high and Nick winds taut round his dick, his nails dig into the skin on Ellis's ass and up he rises in a simple arch. "That your prostate, Nick?" he says, and the reply is this fantastic yearning moan.

"Reckon so," he laughs, draws out and slams back home at mostly the same angle and there's this silent explosion of precum, he can feel it in the softening of Nick's walls round his hardness, in the sudden cooling drops spattering his hips and the warmth dripping down the curve of his sack. "Oh good fucking lord Nick that's so fucking sexy," and his friend, who is many things but helpless ain't one of them, says something that ain't quite words and his head falls back on the bare mattress and he gives this shaky sigh.

No. Not a sigh. Christ on a bicycle, he just heard Nick whimper. Somebody give Ellis a goddamn medal.

He laughs, it's how he's built, Ellis laughed the first time he got laid--Marybeth Delaney outta Tybee Island, in the backseat of her brother's car, they were both seventeen and she felt sorry for him. Marybeth rode him and she come three times and he guesses she stopped feeling sorry for him after the second, he still remembers pressing his face in the soft give of her breasts and giggling foolishly in the weird agony of all that lovely. She thought it was charming. Nick don't agree, Ellis hears the anger cut through the arousal in his voice: "The f-fuck you laughing at--"

"'cause you're fun, asshole," Ellis says, "you get so tight when I hit it like this--" He demonstrates, pushes directly onto the right spot, enjoys the sound of Nick choking on his words and the tight hug of slick walks round his dick. "--you're all hard and wet and I can't fucking--"

Another squirt, and oh, is he getting off on Ellis talking dirty to him? All right. Ellis moves faster, barely pull out then in so much fucking heat squeezing his sex, and he talks, turns off what little filter he has and lets it all come out, every couple words punctuated by the motion of his body: "--oh fuck yeah Nick that's right c'mon fuck me show me how much you fucking love it I can feel your dick throbbing right now touch it c'mon stroke your cock show me"

Nick. Obeys. Him.

His hand slides between their tangled bodies and fingers brush the top of Ellis's cock as Nick works up and down his own shaft. Ellis nearly comes from the mindless wave flooding his body, no fuck no please not yet. He distracts himself by pouring his thought into Nick, telling him exactly how good that feels and why, finding his almost-nonexistent mouth and finally giving him a real kiss. Nick freezes and Ellis almost retreats but then his tongue fucks Ellis's mouth and oh god he'd best hurry or Ellis won't be able to stop himself.

Somehow Ellis makes it. After a blank eternity of Nick warming up to being kissed and his pussy sucking Ellis in like he was made for it, those tight walls shudder and cramp down and Nick surges up off the bed and full round him, thighs snap round Ellis's hips and fingers yank the hell outta his hair and and one last jet of liquid sex and oh lord Nick fairly screams. He vaguely thinks they oughta be quiet but can't recollect why, he laughs instead, listening and feeling Nick finish for so long it must be lobotomizing.

Ellis tries to pull out but Nick grabs his ass with both hands and breathes " _don't you fucking dare_ " and okay, he's fixing to finish anyhow so on he goes, out into the cold numb air and into the still-pulsing wet heat, and a few pumps later, Ellis hears Nick winding up for another home run, he cackles and speeds up and yeah there he goes again scratching up Ellis's back as he comes and this time he can't stand all this tightness and Ellis cries out Nick's name as he vanishes into someplace bright and painless.

Next thing Ellis knows, he's laid out on his back. Cold pools across his hips, drips down his flaccid cock, paints the tops and insides of his thighs. The dent in the mattress next to him must be Nick. The sheet feels kinda wet under his left ass-cheek. Before he can slip off the ruined condom or take a full breath, a loud thumping knock rings out in the night.

Him and Nick both experience heart attacks. His own blood ices and he nearly gets a elbow to the face as Nick flies outta bed. He hears the familiar click of a magazine in a pistol and the equally familiar rough of the voice at the door: "Will y'all keep that shit down? I'm trying to fucking sleep here!"

Coach. Ellis buries his entire body under every sheet and pillow he can find in three seconds.

"You jealous, Coach?" Nick says, a smile in his voice.

"Son, I ain't into that, and you better praise God I ain't, else I'd break you in half."

"That a fat joke?"

"No. It's not. It's a keep it to a dull roar, you rude sons of bitches, and let me get some goddamn shuteye."

"We'll be good, I promise," Nick says, and Ellis never felt so glad for the sound of footsteps leaving his hearing range.

He lies swaddled up in the sheets and his embarrassment 'til the footsteps fade to nothing. The pistol returns to the end table with a clothy thump (prob'ly a doily). The boxspring announces Nick sitting on the bed, then him lying down. "Get outta there, you silly bastard. Jesus, you'd think Coach was your dad or some shit."

Ellis comes up for air. "I feel bad. I didn't wanna wake anybody up."

"Fuck that sideways. Besides, you were rebel-yelling at the end there."

"Oh, shit, was I?"

"Yep. Can't really blame you. I am that good."

"Well." He gets the condom off before it disappears into the sheets. Drops it on the floor for him to step on in the morning. Ellis don't know what to say. He didn't reckon this would happen at all, or this fast. He almost wishes Nick would tell him to fuck off and leave him be. But Nick don't seem too keen on talking, either. 

He ain't sure who falls asleep first.

***

He dreams of the last time he saw his Momma, only it ain't the same. The visuals are all in HD, the sound is like a phonograph under six feet of water. She stands in her tiny kitchen and flips a pancake outta the frying pan and onto a dinged-up green platter she brung home from work. She wears the robe he got her two Christmases ago, it's furry and white like you get at the nice hotels roundabout River Street. Barefoot like she always was at home. There's a stack of dirty mismatched dishes in the sink. Ellis washes one with a cheap green-and-yellow sponge, rinses it off, clacks it into the drying rack.

She asks how many pancakes and he says three. (He don't hear it, don't need to, he remembers it all even in his sleep.) She nods, her frizzy brown-gray hair drifting around her face, and sneezes. He says she sounds like shit. She says she's fine, she's due a couple days off and she'll use 'em to rest up and get over this cold. He tries to tell her she'll be dead in two days and hears the warbling notes of _I'mma keep bugging you 'til you get to a doctor_.

She asks him to get the bacon out the fridge. He floats through the kitchen like a ghost, touches the handle on the old yellow Fridgidair. It pops open wide and he looks in but instead of chipped shelves and bottles of Tabasco and boxes of leftovers from work, he's in the in-law suite. The whole place shivers alive round him and under his feet. He squints against the yellow light, looks back and the door--no, the mouth of the room opens and there stands a whole family of headshots. Daddy with marker in hand, Momma, gramma, grandpa, teenage boy. Something drips down the back of his neck and Ellis touches it and feels chips of bone and hot blood and oh Christ that's his goddamn brain--

He wakes up to slight light under the door and a hand on his forehead. Ellis shrieks, slaps the hand away, nearly falls out the bed.

"Jesus Christ, Ellis!"

That, oh. That's Nick. Fuck. He opens his mouth to say sorry and what comes out is a sob.

He curls up into a protective ball, he tries to stop, he tries, but he just can't. He tries so hard all the goddamn time to listen and comfort and be funny and ain't nobody figured he needed any of that, including him. He swallows and his throat is too thick to close and he can't see for the wall of water in his eyes and he just fucking can't.

A knock at the door. "You boys all right?" Ro. He snuffs, tries to dry it up, Christ Nick must fucking hate him right now.

"Fine," Nick says, "I just told Ellis that the Spice Girls broke up. Poor asshole hadn't heard."

"... Ellis, honey, are you all right?"

"Yuh," he says through a mouthful of his own arm.

"Well..." Hesitant. She don't believe 'em. But she follows with: "Quit fucking around in there. We've got to eat, and we've got an airport to find."

"Yes, mother," says Nick. 

As Rochelle walks off, Ellis smothers another weepy noise into the mattress, and then there's this warm pressure up behind him and one of Nick's arms shoves up under him and wraps round his waist and the other hand settles in his hair, strokes his scalp. Nick holds him 'til the flood subsides a couple minutes later. He waits 'til Ellis is mostly just huffing snot and giving those dry-heaving kinda sobs.

"... You wanna tell me what that was about?" Nick says.

No. Hell no. "My momma died of the Infection. I found her. After."

Nick oughta tell him he's a idiot. Folks don't die of Infection, and the zombies ain't the walking dead. "... Did you kill her?"

"No. I, I couldn't. I should've--"

"Fuck should've. You did what you had to."

"I'm sick and fucken tired of doing what I hafta. They're... The people who lived here... They died here. I found 'em. Last night. I hadda get 'em out the house ' cause of the stink and I's too goddamn tired to look for another place. I threw five bodies of five regular people outta goddamned window and then I stole their food and then I stole their condoms and then I fucked in their house while they all sat on the goddamn back lawn and rotted. And I don't know what the fuck I'm turning into. I used to have to pull over and cry if I saw roadkill. Now I spend most of my time killing things what look like people and pretending it don't bother me none. The fuck does that say about me?"

"Nothing."

The answer is so immediate and confident, Ellis cannot believe its reality. "What?"

"It. Means. Nothing."

"How can you say--"

"'Cause we live in a shitsack world where pretty much everything sucks from the start and doesn't get better. Ever. We just want it to be better. That's why you wake up most days with that shit-eating grin all ready to kill a goddamn platoon of zombies. 'Cause you're hoping for a day when you can finally look at all the fucking damage this is doing to you and try to fix it. Maybe that day doesn't come. So the fuck what? You tried. You tried harder than most of humanity. That counts, hell, I dunno, maybe more than anything. Sure, it sucks that the people who lived here are all dead. They're not your cross to bear. You didn't kill them. They don't care if they rot indoors, or outdoors, or on the fucking moon. You giving up, you acting like you can't enjoy yourself ever again, that'll bring exactly no one back to life, it'll cure exactly none of the Infected, and it'll bring back zero civilizations. That shit is beyond you to fix. So quit thinking that you can fix it, enjoy what you've got, and keep your shit together. I do not need you falling apart on me in the middle of a horde."

"... okay."

"I am gonna fucking smack you if you say sorry or okay one more time today. Come on, Ellis. You're better than this."

Ellis scrubs the heels of his hands against his sandpaper eyes. Considering what he said, Ellis oughta feel worse. And yet it's such typical Nickean bullshit that it does kinda work. Leastways Nick is, for God's sake, listening to him and trying, in his strange fashion, to help Ellis feel better. Or dry up his waterworks.

"... I am better than this." Weak. Unbelieving.

"Getting there."

"I ain't better than this."

"You suck."

"Nick?"

"What?"

"You make a pretty good big spoon."

"You make a pretty good wet blanket. You ready to deal with the bullshit?"

"... I guess. Yeah."

"Then wipe all that shit off your face, and let's get some breakfast."

***

A lot can happen in two days, but the only stretch of time what mattered was the fifteen-odd seconds when the pilot turned and Nick shot him. Everything else blurs already in Ellis's mind, part of the dull, horrific routine. The only changes were some of the sights along the way, and they ain't exactly sightseeing. 

He laid awake in the pipe, his head near Coach's feet and his feet near Rochelle's head, and thought about all their running the previous night, the thrill of success when they found a podunk airport, sent up those flares, and the hellacious fight after that. All to refuel a whirlybird destined to crash and burn a couple hours later and leave them stranded too far away from the Big Easy to make a damn bit of difference. Eventually, he decided the whole thing was funny and fell into a dreamless sleep.

The next safe room is more of a house. They hunker down for the night and Ellis tapes up the big gash in his calf he got falling off one of them swamp bridges. More of the same. Same kinda cold food outta cans and dry food outta bags, same flat bottled water, same trying to clean off all the grime and gore with whatever is handy (baby wipes, this time), same smell of deadness and blood in every breath, same low conversation about their next move.

Well, the rest of 'em have that conversation. Ellis kinda wanders aimless through the small house, running his finger under every line of graffiti, mouthing out every word. Their discussion hits his ears as a tidal ebb and flow, one voice flows into another and no words make it outta the ocean alive. He's at a point where he can talk, or he can think, but not both at once, and he opts for thinking.

Nick was right, he decides as he reads the twenny-ninth epitaph. None of this meant nothing. The pilot catching green flu coulda been an act of God or a judgment on their callousness; coulda meant he should've left that family in that bedroom, or given 'em a good burial. But more likely, the pilot caught it on account of he wasn't immune. The four of 'em mighta lived this long 'cause they was chosen to rise above the rest of humanity, but prob'ly it was a accident of birth. There hadda be at least one name on this wall of somebody with a bigger brain than his, or a stronger heart, or better training than shooting BBs at pitchers of squirrels ten years before Infection. And they's rotting in tangled piles of corpses not ten feet away from the front door, all the same, and he's standing here reading their names and wondering who they was. 

And maybe he and Nick fucking two nights ago was some great cosmic emotional event worthy of some capitals, it was Meant, Romantic, a Thing of Beauty. But Ellis doubts it. Nick surely treats him no different now than before. Ellis is of more sentimental stock, but he can read the writing on that wall as well as he reads another epitaph ( _Walter Ray '59-'09 father granfather badass_ ). He can't make Nick think of what they done as anything more than the conspiracy of Nick's hormones and Ellis's easy attachment to handsome dickheads. If he could, then Nick wouldn't be Nick and maybe they wouldn't'a fucked in the first place. Was it so bad, though? He enjoyed every blessed second and wasn't that meaning enough for him?

Yeah.

Once he drifts back to the other three, Rochelle starts yawning and suggests they bed down. They got a double bed and a mess of sleeping bags to work with. Ellis picks up one of the sleeping bags, jerks back when Ro lightly slaps his hand, like a mom keeping her kid from reaching in the candy dish.

"What?" he says.

"You are sweet, Ellis, but you need to work on paying attention sometimes," she says, picking up a couple bags. "Feels wrong to have one person sleep in a double bed, I am not sharing a bed with any of y'all, no offense, and if you were listening earlier, you'd've heard Coach say the hard floor's better for his back. You and Nick can have it."

"That's--" he starts.

"You ain't fooling nobody with your pigshit, young'un," Coach says, shaking his head. He quickly unzips a red plaid sleeping bag and lays it flat on the floor. "Y'all just remember what I said. Keep the goddamn hootin' and hollerin' to a minimum, or I ain't gonna just talk about knocking some skulls, you feel me?"

It occurs to Ellis that the three of them must have talked about what he and Nick done, long enough to lay out a couple ground rules, while he was woolgathering. He hangs his head, convicted, the brim of his hat blocking most of his peripheral.

A hand settles on the crown of his head. He looks up, sees Ro grinning in her easy way at him. "He's a handful," she says. "Go grab you a handful. Maybe you'll calm him the fuck down."

"I can hear you!" Nick, his voice just slightly offended, coming from the vicinity of the double bed.

"I know you can, you sorry bastard, and you better be nice to Ellis, or you'll have to deal with me."

The sound of a body sinking into a flimsy mattress with no boxspring supporting it.

Rochelle lets Ellis go, and at last, he catches on. Rochelle and Nick musta fucked. Something in how she talks about it-- _he's a handful_ , like she knows all too well of what she speaks--clues him in. She don't sound bitter or pissed off, though, he guesses he wasn't stepping in on anything, maybe it was over before it really got going. And okay. He grumbles something that sounds like agreement and Ro nods and starts making a nest of sleeping bags next to Coach's, tucked in under the hanging cabinets on the wall farthest from the tiny bedroom.

Ellis sails across the room, the good ship Embarrassed As Fuck, and stands at the edge of the bed. He shucks off his hat and the rest of his clothes. Nick's stretched out under the threadbare sheet. His suit's folded in a careful square on the floor by his side of the bed. He climbs in after as Coach puts out the lantern, and the fortified windows block all the ambient night light and his vision sinks into a fuzzy black nothing.

Nick don't touch him, don't speak or move for a time, and Ellis accepts this. He reckons Ro and Coach had more faith in whatever the fuck this is than him or Nick, they thought it had some Real Meaning when there ain't none. He stares up sightless as the dark fades into dim shadows on the ceiling, as the expected sounds of an isolated cough and throat-clearing and the shift of somebody rolling over in their sleeping-bag melts into the deep steady rhythm of Rochelle breathing pockmarked by the occasional snore outta Coach.

He's almost asleep when a different sound joins the rest: an organic kinda clatter, like paper or cardboard. Ellis's eyes pop open and he observes Nick lying beside him, holding something small and indistinct in his hands. Then Ellis hears the crinkle of foil and he knows what Nick's got.

Nick rolls over, spoons up along Ellis's side. Thin lips find Ellis's neck, then his ear, Nick's two o'clock shadow scruffs and tickles and nearly makes Ellis squirm to get away, he wasn't this hairy the last time. Nick whispers so quiet he can barely make out the words. "Think you can keep it quiet?"

"... yeah?"

"Then hurry the fuck up."

Nick presses the condom into his hand and turns his back to Ellis; he made his offer and he's waiting for a yea or a nay. Ellis flips the wrapper between his fingers like he's rolling a coin and he cannot stop smiling. Okay. Maybe this didn't mean shit to Nick or to God or the universe or whatever, but it does him. Nick coulda left the box of life-jackets back at the house, if he really believed they only fucked 'cause he was ovulating. But he brung it with. 

Nick wanted to use the five (now four, Ellis gently works the foil packet open and takes the rim in his fingers) condoms left in that box. Ellis has maybe five (now four, he rolls over, ignores the brutal agonizing itch of his calf healing, presses flat against Nick's back, praise God for the old shitty mostly-quiet mattress, he's hard from the anticipation and his cock slides between Nick's thighs) more rolls in the hay to look forward to. 

Nick's fingers catch the tip of his dick and guide him where Nick wants him to go and he closes his eyes and holds Nick and they're off. He rocks like how Nick likes it, and when he feels precum flow so warm over his cock, he sticks his fingers in Nick's mouth and Ellis tells him real softly how good he feels and can Nick feel how hard Nick gets him. Ellis comes first this time and he keeps back his usual infernal racket by holding his breath, just as the last pump of cum hits the tip of the condom he lets his breath out and it takes the shape of a whispered _I love you Nick_ and Nick don't say a single word about it. He pulls out and ditches the rubber and he don't give Nick time to wonder if he's gonna have to finish off alone. He uses both hands on Nick, the left stroking his cock and the right fucking his pussy with two fingers wrapped up in a fresh condom and he considers working a third in there when Nick twitches round him so hard Ellis almost loses a finger.

He lays there after and wipes his hands on the sheet and listens to Nick fall asleep. And he could be pissed off or resentful or distrustful, he could question their idiot's logic in fucking in the graveyard of the world, or he could demand Nick give him more than a few orgasms and the occasional pat on the head like he's a good dog, but Ellis ain't a asker. 

He's a giver, it's just how he was raised.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inevitable once an Anon on Tumblr claimed it was "ridiculous" to even suggest that Nick could be trans. Because Nick is manly, and trans men are not. This Bud's for you, Anon. Love and kisses and middle fingers - Nick


End file.
